


The Honesty Blue

by Rhincodontypus



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Eren has voices arguing with each other in his head, F/F, F/M, Fish, Hotness, I probably forgot something but oh well, M/M, Marine Biology, Mexico, Sarcasm, School Trip, Scuba Diving, Sexual Content, Smut, WHALE SHARK, friendship drama, i think it's like back and forth monologuing, many fish, philosophical angst, possibly inaccurate fish information, some references to other books that will be credited in each chapter, somewhat slow build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2015-07-25
Packaged: 2018-04-07 19:42:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4275606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhincodontypus/pseuds/Rhincodontypus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eren would never have guessed that the guy that sat next to him on the bus would change his life--and vacation, forever. Levi never realized he'd be stuck with an idiot with anger management issues for the next nine days.<br/>Scuba diving, fish, hot tubs, Mexican food, and hotel, I mean "resort," rooms. Enjoy a cool, refreshing A/C system that (usually) works around the clock to keep you at a comfortable 18 degrees Celsius, as Levi tells you about Shitsenpai, Hanji determines the proper spot to cut off a cockroach's head, and Eren goes through the beautiful motions of a mental panic attack. <br/>But what's this? Secrets buried under facades?! It seems there is more to every story than what meets the eye  . . .</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Four in the Morning

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first published fanfic ever. I think I used some references to several items that I acknowledge and promote in the end notes. I hope ya'll enjoy. New Chapter either in three days or this weekend but definitely by next Monday.

So one day I wake up right? It feels like any other one day. There’s some birds singing, my alarm clock looks as blood red as ever, but instead of screaming 1:54 PM at me there’s a cruel 2:45 am. I don’t want to get up. Basically because a consequence of getting up is having to do things that required more than zilch effort. Though technically even that’s not true because you have to breathe to stay alive, and breathing expels about 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, or ten billion trillion atoms, which basically means over the course of a normal night’s rest you lose about a pound. I guess it’s regained during the day. So you have to lose weight AND breathe while you sleep. You also have to have either terrifying dreams of being eaten alive by giant cannibals or very arousing dreams that either way end with you waking up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night.

However, back on the subject of losing weight, it is true you lose more weight moving, which is something people do when they’re awake, and that was something I would have to do today for a very, very long time. I mean, does a tortoise look forward to lugging around a giant shell when he’s still groggy with sleep? I wasn’t--but I didn’t have a giant shell I have a heavy suitcase.

“Eren,” the door opens softly. I groan. “Eren, it’s time to go.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” she leaves so I sit up, yawning hugely, and would’ve fallen back onto my bed to sleep had some voice in my head not start peptalking me up. “Come on Eren!” it squeaks. “We’re going to see fish! Turtles! Whale Sharks! WHALE SHARKS!”

“Shut up, blockhead,” Nonetheless I got up. Whale sharks, man. The downside of this was the fact I would probably fall off the boat and die, but it would make for a memorable trip for EVERYONE so why not give it to ‘em.

Dressed in light pants and a sweatshirt, I slipped downstairs, grabbing my backpack on the way down. There wasn’t much in it because there’s not much you can use when your vacation is mainly spent at the bottom of the ocean, except a phone I would likely be on 24/7, my passport, some gum, money, and a pen.

My mother is nowhere to be seen, meaning she’s probably waiting for me in the car, but I pause for just a moment to look at a photograph of the four of us. My father on the right with his catfish-whisker beard, my adopted sister with her eyes not on the camera but on me, me with a scrape on my cheek and red in the face with some forgotten rage, and my mother sitting behind me with dark brown hair identical to my own that toppled down on one side of her head in a beautiful cascade just as rich in thickness and color as Willy Wonka’s chocolate waterfall. Dear God if I’m not sentimental.

The ride is silent to the high school. When we’ve almost entered the parking lot, my mother clears her throat. “Are you sure you didn’t forget anything?”

Me: Well if I did it’s too late anyway.  
Her: Take care of yourself, Eren.  
Me: I know how to take care of myself I’m fifteen.  
Her: Mikasa’s not here this time, you have to try to make friends--  
Me: I know how to make friends, Mom! Bye!

I slam the passenger side door as I get out and round the car fast to the back to get my suitcase. I expect my mom to just drive off when I get out but she gets out, and follows a few steps behind me to where a loose group of people were. Could it get anymore drawn out? On the bright side, we had arrived exactly on time.

Mr. Smith is there, talking with some parent, but nods at me with my approach. There are two other kids from my grade going--two guys named Thomas and Daz--but I don’t really know either of them particularly well. There’s about twenty other people that are totally unfamiliar too after that.

The trip would be approximately nine days with two of those days being travel days. In between the going there and coming back time gap I would be diving everyday three times to look at fish, explore wrecks, or what not including the exciting possibility of being killed by a porcupine fish, which I was kind of hoping for. It was better than dying hit by a Doritos truck. There would be an excursion the following Thursday to swim with Whale Sharks later in the week, and the day after that we’d go out at nine at night to look for turtles until two in the morning. Do you think they called the beginning of the day morning because everyone who has to get up during that time is sad?

“Good morning children!” Pixis was walking over to us, wearing a backpack and carrying two other bags, one of which was netted so it was see-through. It was fairly easy to determine this was his scuba gear bag.

No one responded, but Pixis hardly noticed, setting down what he had next to Smith and already beginning to joke about how we’ll swim across the Caribbean if we miss our flight. This somehow upsets the third teacher there, Mr. Shadis, and he orders everyone to hurry up and put their suitcases in the back of the van.

Pixis: Oh lighten up! It’s not like they’ll all be making it back! They should spend a few more drawn out moments with their loved ones!  
Shadis: How in the name of it all could you joke about something like that?! We’re supposed to reinforce the beliefs that everything will be fine!  
Pixis: What’s that? I can’t quite hear you, is there a high pitched whine coming out of your mouth or is that just the sound of your inner bitch?

And everyone except former students of Pixis gasped as the late middle aged man took a swig of a water bottle that may or may not have had water in it. Mr. Smith asked us all to please hurry up loading onto the mini-mini buses.

My mother, who’d been standing next to me, reached up on her toe tips and kissed my cheek. “Mom,” I protested.

She laid a hand on my chest.

“Take care of yourself,” she told me. “I need you to come home.”

“I’ll tell that to the sharks,” I muttered under my breath, and then I pushed past her. I made my way up to the first van, thrusting up my suitcase into the back of it, and then trudged up to the front of the van to board without much melo-drama, though some girl started crying behind me.

It was dark, but there was still an empty seat in the back that I climbed into. Another guy came on the bus and had to sit next to me, but because it was dark, I didn’t really see his face, nor did I really care. I had been given this trip by Mikasa. She was also licensed, but our parents could only afford to send one of us if we were also going to go on a family trip to California later this summer, so they chose her. I went into a very mature-tantrum-filled time period after this, and then in March on my Birthday, she gave the trip to me, saying, “If it’s really that important to you, you should go.”

I was pretty sure it was just a good way to get out of actually having to spend her own money on me but I wasn’t going to argue.

“Oi,” a complaint came up from the guy next to me. My knee had been brushing his.

“Sorry,” In fairness I was sitting in a fairly awkward spot on the bump where the wheel of the van was. My legs felt squashed up. “Would you switch spots? It’s kind of a tight fit here.” The guy’s outline could be seen in the dark, and considering he was notably smaller than me, maybe he would prefer taking my spot.

“Deal with it. It was your choice to sit there.”

I opened to argue that No, this was the last seat available on this bus, when Smith came up with Pixis behind him, a box of cookies in his arms. A big box.

“Score!” the girl in front of me shot her fist into the air just for the girl next to her to force it down.

“Ymir, calm down,” she pleaded.

Mr. Smith took his spot and then looked at us. “Who’s ready for Mexico!?”

There was some half-hearted cheer from the seat across from me.

“Close enough, Pixis, they can have the cookies. Leave some for the other van.”

When the box was finally mangled away from the girl in front of me named “Ymir” I took a chocolate one and offered the box to the kid next to me. He took it and passed it across the aisle without taking a cookie.

Me: Hey I might’ve wanted seconds!  
Guy: You don’t need seconds.  
Me: Ymir got seconds. And thirds.  
Guy: You don’t need seconds.

So after being called fat twice, I remained silent for the rest of the ride, only occasionally talking to the girls in front of me because the one on the aisle was so loud. The guy next to me didn’t say another word. I kind of wanted to get in his face for calling me fat, but that same stupid voice in my head that had woken me up was now running in circles screaming “BE NICE. BE NICE. YOU’RE STUCK WITH THIS GUY FOR A WEEK. Plus he might be hot.” which normally wouldn’t have occurred to me except for the constant pestering of not just mom, not just my sister, but both of them plus my father, to try to be civilized. And if my Dad goes so far as to get involved, then I kind of have to listen a little bit. He does cool things like that--plus there’s the promise of being allowed into the basement WHICH HE STILL HASN’T DONE SEVEN YEARS AFTER PROMISING ME to show me the “secret”--so that bribe is still up there in the balance and is sometimes useful to get me to do small things. Small is something my temper is probably not, but it’s not so big I’m seeking medical help yet, so let’s let it be.

We arrived at the airport quarter to four, and piled out of the van. I got my suitcase without really looking around--this was just one trip of many I had taken before to the airport--except last time it had been to Germany and France. Mr. Shadis went around interrogating everyone for their passports, though I noticed he skipped the guy that I’d sat next to, whom I finally got a good look at under the light of the lamp post.

As I had noted earlier, he was short for a guy, little over five feet. He had an undercut that gave him a casual military appearance. If that’s possible. His hair was black, or it looked so in this light. It could’ve actually have been a dark brown. His skin was relatively pale, which makes sense of a Northerner like ourselves after a crappy spring, and his eyes were heavily darkened by thick eyelashes that surrounded his grey-morning eyes. Huh. Now I have an appreciation for the morning. I couldn’t really get a good look at his build since he was wearing a sweater, but it looked like he was in pretty good shape. “But not as in good shape as you,” the voice in my head promised. “Shut up, you don’t know that. Maybe Eren’s fatter than he thinks,” another version of me retorted. I might as well have an angel and devil arguing up there.

It takes a couple minutes to get everyone’s stuff out, plus some idiot forgot her phone on the van and only remembered when it was driving away--so we had to call the van back for that, but Shadis was also getting impatient so he decided to take everyone that was ready in except the girl, Smith, and the girl’s friend.

I lost track of the moderately hot guy that had sat next to me and ended up standing in line behind the two girls from the bus. The short one was REALLY short and introduced herself as “Christa” and her friend as “Ymir.”

“Tch,” Ymir rolled her eyes. “You just think people will get confused if they have to deal with your real name.”

“That’s not true!” Christa protested, but I cut in. “What’s your real name?”

“Historia,” she flushed slightly. Ymir cackled. “Hey Historia, tell me what year the Civil War happened.”

“I’m not a textbook! And April 12, 1861.”

Ymir leaned over to me and whispered loud enough Historia could hear. “Guess what she wants to major in?”

“Shut up!”

Ymir was slim and maybe a little taller than me, with ratty, unevenly lengthened hair pulled into a ponytail. If I had to guess, I would have to believe she’d cut it herself. Loose hair fell around her face, which was already well tanned as if she was trying to rub it in the faces of everyone else that no one else could get cloud burned like her. She had a raccoon mask of freckles dappling her nose and skin below her eyes, which were slanted slightly and an amberish-gold color. She dressed in plain, masculine oriented clothes, considering the dark colors and cuts. The state of her shoes would’ve had any shoe saleswoman hounding over her.

Historia was less than five feet with huge blue eyes and blonde hair that falls in a shimmering wave around her face like that of a model though I don’t know much--despite it being four in the morning. She has a rounder face, and appeared generally sweet and approachable. She’s dressed in the yoga pants thing girls are into and wears some sort of sports team jacket. She leaps up now, trying to grab the hair tie that Ymir stole and holds teasingly above her head.

“So how old are you exactly, Eren?” Ymir jerks the hair tie out of reach again as Historia leaps for it again.

“Fifteen.”

“Sophomore next year?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool. Christie and I are going to be seniors ne—Hey! That’s my foot!” Ymir’s arm moved downward instinctively to protect herself from more attacks and Historia snatched away the tie. “Hah!” she exclaimed triumphantly, instantly tying up her hair into a loose ponytail.  
The line moved then, and Ymir pushed Historia out in front of her to check her bag first. She looked silly--this little girl carrying a huge suitcase.

“So why are you here?” Ymir asked, somewhat more hostile. “Do you have dreams of becoming a marine biologist?”

“Well--yeah, but--.”

“Hah. You know more people choose entertainment and arts over engineering and science, right? Guess why.”

I open my mouth but she doesn’t pause long enough for me to speak. “Fear of failure. At least when no one appreciates your art you can blame it on them. If you screw up data it’s only your fault. It takes guts to be okay with being so humiliated. I mean, you want that kind of failure, right? You feel bad enough to want that kind of sacrifice of yourself, huh? Just going to waste away accomplishing nothing as you try to keep up with people born with natural talent in your field, huh? Geez, I’d have to be really screwed up to want that.”

What the hell what this random stranger just what. I felt my blood pressure sky rocket. “YOU CAN’T SAY TH--.”

“People study science because they want to understand while an artist just wants to interpret what’s already understood so it accommodates their opinions. If your girlfriend’s actually going into history, is she going to be more interested in the facts or the interpretation she has about the facts?” It was the guy that had sat next to me on the bus. He looked up at Ymir with an unwavering gaze.

“What does history have to do with science?” Ymir narrowed her eyes.

“History adds to the point about the importance of the facts provided by scientists like anthropologists to piece together an understanding of what humans have done. Failure is inevitable, it’s called trial and error, though you’ve never heard of this, which is why experiments are replicated frequently; reliable data even after a clear answer is indicated. Failure’s more of a life led picking on people for joy goes to live out the last fifty years of its life alone.”

I badly wanted to make an “oooo” sound at the guy’s sick burn, but he and Ymir still had unbroken eye contact. He actually looked like a foot taller. And really Actually, they were holding back the line to check bags, who were beginning to complain.

Ymir glanced at them and back down at the guy, then stuck out her hand. “Ymir.”

He looked at it warily. “I don’t know what kind of shit you’ve been touching.” And then he shifted past her and to the check baggage lady. Ymir gazed at him and grasped her sweatshirt over her heart. “I think I’m in love again,” she mocked, and then she stalked off to a rather annoyed baggage man to check her bag. I followed pretty soon after her to the same guy and checked my bag at 22 lb.

“She scares me,” he told me straightaway quite plainly. “I asked her what was so important to hold up the line, you know, just joking. And she told me ‘Curiosity isn’t the only thing that can kill a cat.’”

“That’s Ymir. She has a dark sense of humor,” I explained guiltily. I was just hoping there wouldn’t be an alarm sounded about a snarky terrorist girl to delay any chance of me making the flight.

“Good luck with that one,” he whistled, and then handed back my passport, printed me out two boarding tickets, and I was on my way again.

There was a group that had made it through check in led by none other (surprise, surprise) than Keith Shadis, and with my arrival we made our way to security. This was very easy, mainly because basically I just had to take off my shoes into a bin, empty my pockets of a second pen, slide my backpack onto the conveyor, and get through. They actually forced Ymir to remove her hair tie because of a metal piece in it and go through the scanner not once more, but twice more, followed by a brief padding down. I felt satisfied, but I had no time to rub it into her face because Shadis had already begun the long walk to terminal 23. The guy who’d now not only sat next to me on the bus and called me fat but also served Ymir’s ass on a platter walked right behind Shadis like a dog, but since our bald leader was walking so fast, I didn’t get a chance to catch up to him and thank him for helping out with Ymir. Normally I might’ve been mad at someone for defending me but right now—on this trip with strangers, I was kind of glad because it wasn’t fun to be all alone. Which reminds me…

I looked up from the glaring blue light of my phone around terminal 25, turned, and walked back. Ymir had caught up to us and was smirking wildly at my returning figure while Historia seemed to be telling her off for taking so much delight in an innocent mistake.

“How was getting groped?” I asked her.

She continued smirking coolly. “We exchanged numbers. Eren, can you tell me what number comes after 22? I seem to have forgotten.”

“Oh my God, leave him alone!” Historia shrilled, which had no effect except for Ymir to begin amusing herself over Historia instead.

I was kind of annoyed Ymir was picking on someone that looked so sweet, but Historia seemed to be holding her own, so I slouched off down the aisle of seats and plopped down in an empty one to keep checking my Snapchat and Tumblr. I wonder why they didn’t include an ‘e’ in Tumblr. Maybe too many consonants confuse people.

We board about twenty-five minutes after getting there. I say goodbye to social media for four hours and switch to some app game that requires the type of thinking that usually comes brainless.

I’m seat 24E which means WINDOW. I was cruising on the hope I would get a window every time I flew. Not only was my seating awesome but we were flying on airline SCOUTER which both screamed boy scouts and imaginative, inappropriate jokes from Ymir that could be heard all the way from aisle 19, which regained some begrudging appreciation from myself for her.

A shadow fell across me a couple minutes after I had dove into the mind numbing phone game, and I looked up, expecting to see a forty year old business man and surprised to see the guy from the bus.

“Hey!” I exclaimed as he plopped down next to me. “Thanks for the save back there.”

“Your name is Eren?” he asked, regarding me warily as his thumb stroked the unlit screen of an iPod touch.

“Uhm, yeah? What’s yours?”

“Levi,” he held out his hand. I was surprised because he wouldn’t touch Ymir’s hand, but I took it in mine. He had a surprisingly cool touch like an A/C set to . . . well . . . cool, and a soft palm. My awe in his gesture of greeting was ended by him reaching into his bag and pulling out a travel sized bottle of hand sanitizer, which he applied heavily.

“Why did you stick up for me back there?” I asked him, still not totally deterred.

“You smelled less shitty than her. There was no real reason. I just don’t care for vultures,” he suddenly turned at me, a tad more ticked off. “What the hell were you thinking yelling in an airport?”

“Are you saying I should’ve let her mock me?!” I raised my voice. Around us passengers went silent.

“Control yourself. No one can live to your expectations.” He plugged in his earbuds, pressed play on his iPod and didn’t speak for the rest of the plane ride.

I turned my attention back to the game, angrily forcing the pixilated character to jump and collect, jump and collect, jump—GAME OVER.

I shut off my phone and looked off the window. What expectations? They weren’t expectations! It was just human to want people to be descent.

It’s an expectation to be decent, isn’t it? The sadistic little devil in my head said.

Oh shut up, the angel one was pissed now.

True, humans were far too cruel for it to be human nature to be decent. There was no way around it. For example, how was it ever decent to kill thousands of people? An essential moral of almost every culture in the world is don’t kill people, don’t torture people, because that just resulted in such a negative impact that it was hard to believe it did any good, though humans today still kill murderers and torture war prisoners legally, and was that right? Did it do any good for society to see men who’ve done horrible things die? Or is it just for the satisfaction of those hurt by the murderers, like it was satisfying to see Ymir, my assaulter, being searched for weapons? It didn’t make it RIGHT to be satisfied that someone that did something bad to me was hurt, it just was hard to not be when you don’t feel like your pain was understood since who would react so happily to the suffering of others? He was right, though it had never occurred to me it was my expectations of people that could be a cause of my anger. Yup. I had to stay away from this “Levi” guy if possible. He was making me think way too much on a vacation. And with that I fell into some disturbing dreamed sleep for the rest of the flight.


	2. We arrive in Mexico!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From Levi's POV 
> 
> I mention a music group called "Flunk." which is in no way associated with the Norwegian rock band I found out about fifteen minutes before posting this chapter. Originally I had the band called "Flink" but that was too close to "Fink" so I'm just done. XD

I didn’t sleep the entire flight. Twerp next to me did. Guy across the aisle did.

Boredom and plane-frustration led me to glance at him. Eren is taller than me but then, who isn’t. His hair reeks bedhead, and his wrinkled shirt told me he’d probably slept in it. He’s fairly lean with the muscle build of your typical teenage boy. There’s not much to say about his appearance, he’s just--normal. There was no “one thing about him” like with others. His hand was actually relatively clean as compared to shit-dappled face but that just told me he was about the same as any other male his own age-- his exception being that maybe he wasn’t as sweaty as the rest.

There was a dull implication somewhere deep in my subconscious that told me that maybe there were some people talking to me. Someone in aisle 19, and another in aisle 24. I ignored both, though I could clearly hear everything being said in the rows surrounding my aisle, sinking deeper into the dry beats of Flunk. Music that never improves but never gets worse with songs like “I’ve only got one wind” and “The Wishing Well” which is essentially a combination of techno, the sound of weather or rocks and Pink Floyd without vocalists. The point of having no vocalists is not well understood by the few that have happened to listen to Flunk, but I think it’s pretty simple: I’m surrounded by people, I don’t need to pay for more voices in my ears. Apparently I’m “Missing the point” but I excel at everything I’ve ever done so it doesn’t strike me as a flaw in need of correction.

Four hours of the same songs on loop, the drowse of sleep not yet even having touched me, we land. Kid wakes up as we hit the ground with an “uhhh” sound, and wipes the corner of his mouth of dribble. I vowed to never touch his hand again.

“I had a dream that Pixis killed and fed Shadis to a shark,” he moaned, closing his eyes and cringing.

“Did you shit yourself?” Eren opened his eyes and gave me an odd look. The sense of humor of some seems to be lacking, I guess.

“Uh, excuse me?” I felt someone tap my shoulder causing me to flinch. A Mexican woman with busty curls was looking at me with a mixed look of masked irritation and fatigue. There was a kid next to her and a smaller one in her lap. “Do you mind keeping the language to a minimal? There are children here.”

“Oh,” I looked at the kid in her lap as he chewed on his hand, his innocent eyes staring bleakly at the seat in front of him like a lamb. “I wouldn’t want my kids to grow up to be as shitfaced as me either.” And then I turned back around. Eren was gaping at me.  
Behind me I heard the fast movement of air around heels and a flight attendant asked, “Is there a problem, Ma’m?”

“The gentleman in front of me is cursing in front of my children and—.”

“Apologize,” Eren was staring at me. “Apologize now.”

I studied him a moment. “I was telling a joke.”

“It wasn’t funny. Apologize.”

“Do you think you’re going to enjoy a cool splash in the pool every morning to wake up?”  
That left him dumb while we dis-boarded the plane into Atlanta. I lost track of the people behind me with the beats pounding off in my ears.

“Hey—hey!” I pulled out an ear plug and turned around. “What?”

“I want to talk to you.”

I sighed and started off towards a formation of familiar looking faces with Eren speed walking to keep up. “Then talk.”

“I believe in understanding. It’s like you said to Ymir. I want to be a scientist,” Eren looked down. “So I don’t understand why you would swear in front of a little kid. That seems like a big ‘no’ to me.”

“Were you listening to them at all on the way here?”

“No. Why?”

“She actually said at a point to the Flight attendant, ‘Sorry, my kids know no English.’”

“Oh,” Eren smiled slightly. “So why did she ask you to shut up anyway?”

“It just shows you how in our society the urge to shield the ones we love from things we think will hurt them drives us to act irrationally. I was just pointing out her irrationality—I wasn’t trying to corrupt her kids.”

Eren laughed, and the mood quality improved some. I found myself feeling pleased a second before I shut the emotion down. We’d been let out at terminal 25C, which gave shit-dappled face a lot of pleasure—so loud was her glee I could still hear her through ear plugs. I’m fairly certain Eren turned around and started insulting her back but I wasn’t in the mood to deal with them anymore.

Smith was a bit surprised to glance behind and find I was trailing him. He didn’t say anything, but turned back around. I pretended not to notice, staring straight ahead at the disgusting airport pedestrians, walking on disgusting, germ infected floors. I could go to town washing the floors here. As if on cue, someone vomited to my right.  
We loaded onto a subway-like-transportation-vehicle that would take us to the A floor or something. I refused to touch any of the handrails.

“Afraid you might catch airport cooties?” A pair of glasses magnified the brown eyes of a girl, who had looked over the corner of her shoulder, holding on to a pole like she was about to start swinging around it. Maybe she would swing away out of sight and away from me. 

“Hanji, if I smell your breath any longer I might not need airport cooties.”

She laughed. “Silly Levi! I’ve been going through a pack of spearmint gum since we started this grand journey!”

“You managed to resist the urge of soda on the plane?”

Her face fell a millimeter. “I was trying to tell you about that on the plane but you couldn’t hear me or something and the flight attendant told me I had to calm down and offered me a refreshment.”  
Monitor: ARRIVING AT PLATFORM B. B AS IN BIRD.  
Me: Dear God, could this take any longer?  
Hanji: I wouldn’t take the lord’s name in vein in a darkened tunnel, Levi. *Glares intensely through lenses that reflected bored Levi face*  
Me: …

And it remained … until we arrived at platform “’C AS IN CATASTROPHIC.’” Which I may or may not have made up.

We went up the escalator and then waited at the top while half the group went down again to make sure the stragglers that weren’t with us right then got off on the right platform.  
Shadis got bored and without waiting for Smith started off again to terminal 21A. I followed, noting Eren following doggedly after me. I didn’t ask.

Ymir: Hey Eren, what number comes after 20? I seemed to have forgotten.  
Eren: Cause you mixed up your alphabet and numbers, huh? You’re such an idiot *laughs*  
Me: Dear God that was pathetic.  
Ymir: Motion seconded.  
Christa: Well it was a good try, Eren!  
Hanji: Levi! What did I tell you in the subway?! She’s ALWAYS listening.  
Eren: She?  
Me (to Ymir): Fill your mouth with cowshit, it’ll muffle that screeching noise  
Hanji: I prefer to believe that deities are female due to the act of creating things that is a common theme in the majority of religions.  
Ymir: You’re breaking my heart, short angry man! Motion seconded once again, Four eyes.  
Christa: Will you stop saying that?!  
Shadis turned around slowly to face us—so suddenly Eren almost crashed into me. “Am I hearing name calling and religious debate?”  
Hanji: Technically it was more of just a religious opinion.  
Ymir: Oh go back to the nerds.  
Hanji: Oh tall, sarcastic girl! That doesn’t stop the inner geek within you! *Prances away. Actually prances.*  
Shadis: We have forty minutes. Get lunch here—we’re not stopping for anyone once we’re in Cozumel.

The other group had just caught up to us but now all twenty five began drifting away. Ymir and Christa walked off with the tall witch cackling, while Hanji and her geek friends stood talking a minute, speaking so quickly it was almost unintelligible to a normal person, though it was probably something good because they kept highfiving each other. I noticed Eren was still standing there awkwardly a few feet from me. Oh what the heck.

“Oi, kid.” He jumped slightly. “Let’s get something to eat.” I pushed past him roughly so that our shoulders bumped. Or my shoulder bumped his upper arm.

“Okay!” He hurried after me. I saw out of the corner of my eye, Smith looking approving. I had no idea why at the time—and to this day, believe that if I’d told Hanji about it, she would’ve told me he “could tell the future.” Shitty glasses. My logic was: Kid wasn’t that off if he was interested in fish butts and electrons or whatever.

We went upstairs, walked down the food courts, him trailing me, and I finally settled on Starbucks.

“So hipster, Levi,” he laughed nervously. I gave him a cutthroat look that made him swallow hard.

I got a black tea without milk or sugar and he got a fancy latte or something, plus a bakery item each.

“I’m glad you chose this place,” he tried again, adding a shaky laugh to the mix. “I was worried for a moment you were going to go to the Mexican fast food place.”

“Don’t worry,” I leaned back and sipped my tea. “There will be plenty of opportunities to acquire diarrhea in Mexico.”

“Right . . .” he didn’t seem to know what to say, looking kind of anxious to please me. I could enjoy this another minute. “So,” he tried yet a third time. “You know anyone on this trip?”

“One of the nerds,” I jerked my head in the direction of the escalators, where a girl was timing how long some guy could run on an escalator that was going in the opposite direction. “We’re sort of friends. I try not to associate with them.”

“Do you mean the guy or girl?” Eren was squinting his eyes, which I noticed for the first time. They were teal—which any third grade girl could probably point out easily from their 154 crayon Crayola set. Maybe this was the “one thing about him” that had been missing earlier. 

I glanced in the direction of Hanji and her four friends and turned back to Eren. “I try not to associate with it.”  
“Uhm . . . okay?” He’d done his share of conversation, I could take over.

“I’m a college freshman next year,” I began, sipping before going on. “This is likely my last scuba trip with Rose High school. I’ve done five since starting high school ‘cause there was a year we did two trips, one to Honduras and one to Bermuda on a boat. Like we literally lived on a boat for a week (sips tea). Shitty glasses fell overboard on that one. I almost laughed.”

“That’s your nerd friend?”

I shrug-nodded and took out my croissant. “Hanji Zoe. She’s crazy. They lie when they call her an eccentric eccentric. She’s a supposed ex-Cola-Mentos addict. At the beginning of the year she’d only drink liquids that were combusting. He was sent to the vice principal’s office and then to the guidance counselor’s office three times. It wasn’t until he wrote a lab report on her experience and findings did she “stop.” (Does air quotes. Bites croissant). Four eyes has this life moto— ‘everything is an experiment.’”

“Wow well, she sounds interest—.”

“I’m fairly certain she still drinks exploding soda whenever her happiness isn’t summiting Mt. Rainbows and Unicorns. That’s why I said she’s supposedly an ex-Cola-Mentos addict.” I drank tea. “Don’t talk to him. It’s a mistake. He pretends there’s a bug trying to land on your ear and takes hair samples. Plus she’s a slob. Her socks are never color coordinated.” Or length coordinated. Or clean.

Eren had a look on his face that looked like one might look if they didn’t know if it was okay to laugh or not. He sipped out of his latte. “You’re pretty talkative,” and then he laughed, but it wasn’t an awkward laugh, it was more natural. I felt some pressure be relieved from our little atmosphere of dyadic communication.

“Don’t be stupid. I’ve always been talkative.” I finished, crumpled the bag in my fist, opened my cup’s lid and placed it inside of it.

“Whatever you say, captain.”

I just snorted and threw out the cup. Eren followed suit, and then he said, “Let’s go downstairs. They had a bookstore.”

“We can’t go there.”

“Why not?”

“The Schizophrenic’s there.” Eren laughed but I didn’t see why. Hanji definitely assumed God would eventually kill us all off for saying OMG and probably heard voices.

“That’s insulting.”

“You thought it was funny.”

“Did not! Your sense of humor is super dark.”

“Being in denial is a sign of depression.”

“Not necessarily, but more on the point, if we’re going to give everyone a mental disorder,  
what’s yours, Levi?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Maybe you’re an OCD because you’re constantly cleaning.”

“These are serious illnesses, Eren, that shouldn’t be taken lightly,” I was using a mocking tone.

“Yeah but seriously we should stop.”

“Yeah.”

We walked on silently to the gate but now there was a good feeling in the atmosphere. I almost wanted to smile.

I slouched down in a chair, slinging my backpack down to my feet (water bottle, hand sanitizer, back up sanitizer, hand wipes, bar of soap, safety disposable gloves, money, scuba license, passport, package of tea bags, sunglasses). Eren excused himself to the bathroom, and I zoned out, replugging into my ear buds. He wasn’t back until I was already in line for boarding behind Pixis and Smith, though he slid in beside me, just faintly out of breath.

“I freaked out when I heard them call for general boarding. Almost skipped washing my hands.”

I took a small step away from him. “Did you?”

“Nah, I’m just teasing you.” Teasing? Interesting.

“There’s nothing funny about being unsanitary.”

“I beg to differ. Hey where’re you sitting?” Eren pulled his passport out of his pocket and pulled out a folded up ticket. “I’m 20E. Sweet, Window!”

I pulled my ticket out of my passport. “22B.” So I’d be stuck between two sweaty Mexicans or Americans or a combination. Great.

“Well I guess luck doesn’t come twice in a row,” Eren ran his hand through his ruffled hair, which appeared good bedhead now instead of bad bedhead. Maybe a trick of the light.

We boarded, and in the tediously drawn out few seconds the lady scanning tickets took to do mine, Eren likely had almost reached the plane. I walked onto the plane—honestly, we were some of the last few to board, and watched the numbers on either side of the aisle go by. 12 . . . 17. . . 19 . . . 20. . . 21 . . . 22. I look down at my seat. Some girl shit-dappled like the tall girl on our trip was sitting there. Girls that look similar to her surround her; all on their phones.

“Sorry,” she blushes, her freckles adding a hue to the color scheme that was her face. “My sisters have the other seats in this row. You wouldn’t want to be stuck with us while we bicker about celebrity gossip and boys, would you?”

“No, not at all.” I’d rather spend the whole flight on the airplane’s toilet.

One next to her looked me over. “I wouldn’t mind if he stayed. He’s kinda cute. He could probably talk about boys with us.” Well, all three of those things were probably true. 

“Shut up, Trish,” and then to me. “Cool! My seat’s 20D. Have fun in Cozumel!”

“Levi?” Eren looked up from his phone, astounded as I thrust my backpack under my new seat and sat down next to him.

“The universe decided I should sit here.” I sat down.

He blinked. “Wait, why?”

“Because the universe is a sister of Trish.”

“O-okay,” Eren looked down the corridor thing at aisle 22. “I see.” His well-carved shoulders moved in silent laughter. “What’re you listening to?”

“Flunk. No I don’t know why it’s called that, what music era it’s from, or who the creator or creators are. I just listen to it.”

Without missing a beat, Eren said, “Cool!” and went back to swiping through snapchat. “Can I listen?”

Listen?

“Maybe at the hotel. I don’t need an infection from your filthy ears.”

Eren didn’t seem so fazed by the comment as he might’ve been earlier and even seemed to smile a little. After a moment, as though he had thought about it before saying it, he murmured clearly,  
“I love it when you talk dirty to me.”

I snorted. “Cliché.” Well I was learning new things about Eren’s sexuality, but they weren’t particularly useful here.

The Seat belt buckling sign came on and it was fairly easy to sum up what happened from here. Eren and I chatted a little more. Eren made commentary like the narrator to a documentary while a flight attendant “place[d] the strap over your head,” or as Eren put it, “The one time your parents wanted you to put a plastic bag over your noggin” He watched the plane take off, stared off the window for a few minutes, made some comment about writing a book called 2,000 feet above the Sea, and fell asleep for the next two hours. I switched my playlist to one just called “French” which was just old music from Europe. Eren woke up on the sixth run of the playlist and stared off the window silently until he fell asleep again. We began descending around the eighteenth round of the playlist. Eren woke up when we touched down. He looked around madly like he was afraid there was an earthquake or something. I asked him if he shit himself again, this time in French, and he laughed though he didn’t have any idea what I’d said. 

Unboarding the plane into the hot humidity was almost as extremely unpleasant, and like most people, all sweaters came off. 

We entered the airport, stood in a line for a long time. I shuffled up to the teachers while Eren disappeared in the mass to talk with two classmates the same age as himself. A Mexican airport lady came up and checked my customs form, nodded, and continued on. Behind me, Hanji and Ymir were bickering, but it sounded like both of them were enjoying it.

In front of me, the teachers were having their own fun.  
Pixis: What’s black and white and falling?  
Shadis: Please don’t.  
Smith: Hm. I don’t know.  
*twitching mustache* Pixis (whispers): A penguin falling off an iceberg.  
Shadis: Dot!  
Pixis: What’s black and white and laughing?  
Smith: What?  
Shadis: Erwin! Do you condone this type of behavior?!  
Pixis: The penguin who pushed him.  
Shadis: Really now! This is unacceptable!

The other two men finished laughing, and one by one went up to a counter for their customs forms to be accepted before going to claim their luggage.

My former Chemistry teacher, Mr. Smith, was the last one, and he turned to me and asked, “Levi, how is your vacation so far?”

“Not awful,” I replied. It was going better than last year.

“Just so long as there’s no repeat of last year’s catastrophe,” he smiled vaguely. There was an accented call for “Next” and he went forward—leaving me momentarily alone to just go up to another heavily accented “Next” on the right.

They looked over my passport, forms, and then sent me along to baggage claim, where I let dogs smell my backpack and suitcase. A group of students had formed, creating a throb that hovered about baggage claim, so Shadis and Pixis took the ones of us that had finished through processing where they looked at our cards and scanned the suitcases, and then we were out in the lobby. I was watching everyone coming through luggage processing, when I noticed one kid get pulled aside. He placed his backpack and suitcase on a table, proceeding to open them, which was about when I said, “Pixis, Eren.”

The biology teacher turned around, spotted what was happening, and a new expression came over his face. He stormed back through the doors marked “DO NOT ENTER” and began talking with the security lady, and then he and Eren came out.

“Searching fifteen year olds for cigarettes and alcohol!” he huffed. “I don’t believe even the United States has come to that!”

Eren shuffled to stand next to me.

“Now you really look like you shit yourself.”

“Shu-u-u-t u-p-p,” Eren groaned, his eyes bugging out of his head like a scared puppy. 

Two of the three vans arrived for our group, and so we wasted no time getting into them—Shadis passed out van tickets for everyone that read 96.00 in what I’m guessing is pesos.

A man helped load up our suitcases into the van while Pixis went back to talk two more students out of being searched, and took off. I let Eren sit next to me. It sucked to be pointed out as a potential criminal; that was something I would know, and he now knew.

We began an air conditioned travel through the city of Cozumel, and Eren calmed down as the van grew cooler, instead watching the mangroves and peach colored buildings pass by. It was certainly more colorful than back home in upstate New York. There were flowering trees, cracked sidewalks, and people that no, did not dress mainly in blues, blacks, and greys, but wore oranges and yellows and reds.

We finally pulled into “Villa di Maria” across the road from the ocean and a scuba center called “Dive Scubaing Center” which was probably supposed to be funny but just seemed kind of lame. Now I was hoping that wasn’t where we’d be diving again. I was however hoping to get Hanji as my dive buddy. He was crazy but he shared an equal appreciation for fish—and equal knowledge.

Everyone piled out of the vans and we stood or sat around the entrance of the resort, waiting for Shadis to figure out our rooms. Eventually he started calling people in.

“HANNAH!”

“THOMAS!”

“DOT!”

“HANJI!”

And one by one they would go in, and come out with a keycard, and every one of them except in Pixis’s case waved a partner over. Hanji got put in a girl’s room, so I guess that answered that mystery for the moment.

“LEVI!”

I left my suitcase on the wall and went into a darkened room with blissful A/C.  
“Levi,” Shadis said again. “We’re putting you with Eren. Neither of you seem real friendly with anyone here. Room 15 on the second level.”

“Yes, sir,” I took the keycard, which had an arrow pointing like this → on one side, and went out into the Caribbean sun.

“Come on,” I grabbed my suitcase and backpack and looked at Eren.

“Me?”

“No, the bush behind you. Come on.”

I started down the walking way, and Eren trailed behind me looking moderately pleased with himself.

The room was dark except for one natural light from a window that came steadily in, and it was freezing brilliantly at 18 degrees Celsius. There was one large bed covered in orange sheets more wide than it was long, leaving a large enough gap between two people if they weren’t “together,” and then a couch that was wide enough to be a small bed by the television.

“I’ll take left side,” I slung down my backpack onto the left side of the bed.

“Is it okay if I take—?” I felt like normally people didn’t care, so it was funny that he did care. What am I sensing here….

“Yeah. Unless you’re not comfortable with it. Then the couch is all yours.”

“O-kay,” Eren began setting up on the right. A few minutes later there was a knock on the door and I straightened to go to it.

“Levi,” it was Smith. “We meet in one hour by the pool to rent scuba equipment. Bring anything you already have.”

“Yes sir,” I closed the door and instead opened the bathroom door. “Marble bathtub. It’s better than I remember. I think they renovated out all the cockroaches.”

“What?!”

“Kidding.” I went into the main room and flopped down on the bed. “You’re easy to trick.”

“I’ll know better by the end of this trip,” Eren was sorting through his clothes, pulling out his scuba gear and swim trunks.

“I think you will.”

There was a counter separating the bed from the couch where outlets were located. I wiped down the counter with a handwipe, and plugged in my iPod’s charger. I had a phone but it didn’t make sense to use data here when it’d be so much more expensive. 

I found the Wi-Fi and connected despite the crappy connection for the next twenty minutes to watch funny cat videos on YouTube.

Eren sat cross legged on his side of the bed, but he was reading some book in his lap. Eventually  
I shut off my iPod, and struggled back up into a sitting position to look.

“Like Ymir said in the airport . . . Marine Biology,” he explained sheepishly.

I pointed at a picture, leaning into his arm for a good view, “Sergeant Major, Doctorfish, Blue damsel fish, trunkfish, stoplight parrot fish. Do you want their classification names?”

Eren seemed impressed. “You’re interested too?” I looked up at him, our faces perfectly, intimately close. He smelled good.

“In fish? Yeah. I don’t think I’ll go into marine sciences though.”

Eren flipped the page to another fish identification. “What are you planning to do next?”

“College or the navy, and I’ll end up doing both.” We went over the next few pages of his book, talking about the fish. At some point he checked his phone and found we had only fifteen minutes, so I went along into the bathroom to change. I would wear a swim shirt and shorts. The shirt would ensure the lack of need for someone to rub sunblock on my back and that I wouldn’t get rub marks from the BCD.

I exited the bathroom and Eren, who was right there, was staring at my middle. “Do you have abs? Oh shit, sorry,” he blurted, now blushing. “Never mind.”

“Yeah I do,” I lifted up my shirt. “It’s been described as an eight pack before.” By whom those words were first said was interesting. 

Eren looked but then looked away.“It’s sin to lust, right?”

“I don’t know if that applies in Mexico.” I let my shirt fall back into place. “Get changed we’re going down.” 

Eren blushed, and slipped behind me into the bathroom. I sunblocked up and got out my flippers, mask, and snorkel, the little gear I owned, and checked the balcony to see the progress of everyone else at getting downstairs. There were a few milling around, including shit-dappled face who was getting her back smeared in white glop by the shortie. She looked up and as if on cue, yelled,  
“Romeo, Romeo, where art thou, Romeo?”

“Oh my God, Ymir, Shut up!”

“Yeah I’m your God.” I think I heard the sound of someone getting slapped but it might’ve just been the sound of a sliding door closing as I re-entered the room. Eren was doing the sunblock thing now too on his arms, and I noticed he had his own six pack handy. It was good to share a room with someone that was hot.

“Come on, let’s get down there.”

“Can you do my back?”

I looked at him. He flushed. “Well, I can’t reach all of it and I didn’t bring a shirt like you.”

“Fine. Give me your sun screen.” I squirted a bit into my hand, and thought for a split second how best to proceed, especially if you kind of liked this guy. Should I even like him? He’s kind of a nut in his own ambitious way. I kind of just wanted to bail, but that would result with crawling under a rock and dying, if I was lucky. I could also be delicate and not touch him too much. Or I could just F it all and do it my way.

I smacked my hand of lotion onto his back and began rubbing it on. Eren flinched, and I think I heard him gasp. “This is sunblock not seduction,” I growled. There was a pause where I was just sunblocking him. 

“My back feels seduced.”

“I enjoy seducing your back, then.”

“Then you’re the first.” I pressed my hands flat to the muscle on his back and moved them down to the small of his back, which made him shiver again. “I mean to seduce my back.”  
I finished and wiped my hand off on his shoulder. “Let’s go.” We trudged down the hall to the stairs that led to the entrance. 

Smith looked over when we got down. “Good, everyone’s down. Let’s go.”

The duck crossing over began-almost everyone in single file over the road. 

Eren tapped my shoulder.

“What.”

“I think I left the hotel key back in the room.”

I slipped it out of my pocket, and didn’t bother to explain with words that I had it.

“Oh, good,” Eren sounded relieved.

In about thirty minutes of getting BCDs, regulators, weights, and whatever else everyone else needed, we got into gear. A process which for many involves a great deal of grunting, groaning, and sweating. 

“I wish I had flippers that were that easy,” Eren said, looking wistfully at mine. They didn’t  
require boots like his did.

“You’ll get better at boots,” I assured him. 

I watched him stumble around with his giant tank on his back.

“What sports do you do?” Eren gasped.

“I didn’t do any.”

Pixis came over and grabbed the back of Eren’s tank, taking him up to the edge of the dock and said, “Keep one hand on your weight belt, one on your mask and take a big step forward while looking straight ahead at that boat.”

Eren nodded, popping his regulator into his mouth.

“You got it, Levi?” Mr. Smith asked me. I nodded, and stepped off the other side of the dock.  
Hanji was right there next to me underwater, as if she’d been waiting for me. I looked up at Smith.

“I trust you,” he promised. “Go.”

I deflated my BCD, and submerged fully into the water. It felt good. Really good to get out of the sun. Hanji made eye contact with me, and I made the okay sign at her. We went down the ten feet to the bottom. The first thing I saw was a red-banded parrotfish, which Hanji removed her regulator to mouth the scientific name of at me.

We did kind of the same name game thing for about thirty minutes, and then, seeing Pixis motioning us back, made our way back towards the dock.

“Hey,” I said to Eren. “See anything cool?”

“Moray eel and some shrimp Pixis said are called ‘Sexy shrimp.’”

“Cool!” Hanji bubbled up to the surface. “We saw a lionfish, a puffer fish, a grouper.”

“It was a small grouper,” I muttered to her.

“Still, grouper!!”

“They’re like her favorite or something,” I rolled my eyes even as Hanji spluttered on, “But they are!”

“Alright!” said Pixis, seemingly inexhaustible. “Dinner in an hour and a half!”

I made my way to the water bins and unclipped myself out of the scuba gear, and got the BCD into the water, cleaning my mask out in it as I listened to Hanji talk about dolphinfish, because I clearly cared a lot and Christa fell backwards from the weight of the tank. 

_ _ _

It’s dark because it’s night, and I’m lying on my back, staring at the ceiling, replaying the day in my head. I’m shirtless because it’s too hot, but Eren doesn’t know that because I took off my shirt after the lights were out. It’s only 9:45 but Eren looked exhausted, so I had no argument to stop him from sleeping. The showers here were too hot but manageable for a short time, and dinner was alright, though the water was only cold so I had a cold tea instead of a warm one. I think there was some small fiasco credited to by Ymir and Eren yelling at each other but Shadis broke it up before it got serious.  
Earlier today, I had been looking at his hair like I could now at the back of his head, and it wasn’t a trick of a light, like I had said earlier. I was just kidding myself. Because just now was I admitting to myself that Eren was interesting, and funny, and god damn he was pretty hot. And he was sleeping in the same bed as me. 

Me: Eren, are you awake?  
Eren: Er, yeah.  
Me: Eren, I believe in clocks. These things that tick and tick and tell us where we have to be at the right time.  
Eren: Okay?  
Me: But clocks stop working sometimes because they don’t have batteries or there’s no electricity or they just break down, and then what can tell us where’s the right place to be? My point is, whenever I go on these scuba trips, I don’t have a clock, I’m just here and there is nothing right or wrong to do while I’m off the clock. Nothing that has to happen off the clock has to happen once we’re back on the clock, get it?  
Eren: I guess. So?  
Me: No. Eren, I like you. I would go so far as to say I’m attracted to you. But there’s no possible way anything serious is going to happen between us. It’s off the clock. That’s the only reason anything’s happening at all between us. What I’m proposing is that both of us have an excellent vacation in the company of each other, and then we go back to our individual lives and likely never encounter each other again, but Mexico will be remembered by both of us as ours, the extraordinary week we shared, one of the only times in our lives that we didn’t have clocks to worry about, we didn’t have futures or pasts. Will you take that break with me?

Eren was silent for a long time, so long I thought he’d fallen asleep.

Eren: Okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was a claim in the chapter that the most powerful Gods are all female, but this is clearly a bit eccentric, and used here only as an example of this character's eccentricity, not for religious reasons, as I'm sure ya'll understand.
> 
> So thanks for reading! References in this chapter included to: 
> 
> Pink Floyd, who is an older but good music group from the seventies onward(ish) who released albums like "Wish you Were Here" and "The Wall" which at least I enjoy. When Levi was talking about his music sounding like the the instrumental in Pink Floyd he was referring mainly to "Wish You Were Here," which is easy to understand if you've listened to it
> 
> Reference to Romeo and Juliet as read in freshman year in High School
> 
> Also, you know how Pixis told that Penguin joke? I couldn't think of anything better, but if you know a better joke, leave it in the comments below!


	3. Art Collaging Abs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys!  
> So I was in California for like two weeks and was writing but not really because I made the mistake of signing up for summer classes. :P But I figured I would explain this story a little bit. At the beginning of summer I actually went on a legit scuba trip from my high school to Mexico (changed locations some tho) and while I don't think my adventure was nearly as adventurous as Eren's or Levi's, all the pranks mentioned in the next chapter, did actually happen, though only one of them happened on my trip. Also, the flashback Eren had was also based on true events. Basically the majority of the story was based on actual events.
> 
> Oh yeah, and if anyone here's never been to California or planning to go then I suggest going snorkeling because the one time we did on Catalina island we saw sting rays, guitarfish (which freaked out my sister cause she thought it would eat her or something even though it's only half as big as her), and even an octopus! Plus there's a lot of seals, especially if you go scuba diving (which I didn't get to do ;( ). And there's a herd of buffalo on that island cause these movie people made a film there but then just left them so now there's a herd of functioning, reproducing buffalo just wandering around the island. Weird, huh? 
> 
>  
> 
> Anyways, enjoy the chapter.

My dream that night took place in a “soup pot.” I put it in quotes because the ground was there but it was made of soft vegetables. It was really hot and there were rivulets of soup pouring down all around me like some sort of delicious, scenic death trap. And there was a little old woman there who told me to “not go down the hole” and of course I was like “what hole” and then I was teetering at the edge of a precipice. A soup precipice. Below me, noodles boiled in muddy water of chicken flakes. It smelled delicious. I slipped on the carrot mush under my feet and fell into the soup, immersing my entire body in delicious chicken noodle stew. But then I started drowning, my lungs filling in the soup until I could feel them trying to cough themselves out of my body.

I woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. My pillow was wet from saliva where I had bared into it with my teeth. I glanced to the left, but there was no Levi. Normally, I might have investigated, but I was too tired for that, and collapsed back onto my pillow.

Once again I was immersed into Eren’s Dream World. Except this time I wasn’t being drowned in delicious soup, I was facing something much more terrifying. Levi.  
He was talking to me with that bored I-don’t-really-care expression but I couldn’t really tell what he was telling me. Then suddenly he morphed into Armin, and I started to hear the conversation.

“I’m bored,” Armin said. We were both sitting on the ground, him with his legs in a loose butterfly pose and me with mine over the edge of the large step below me. He was looking to the right of him to the corner of the music room back at the high school.

“How’s your summer going?” I asked him. The awkwardness was gone! I thought, elated.

“Boring,” he sighed. “There’s not much to do.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked him, eager to be friends.

“A science camp, maybe. I don’t know. Not much.”

“Cool! I’m going scuba diving and then we might go to Germany but the details are iffy.”

The dream ended with the sound of a ringtone, and I cracked an eye in time to watch an arm dart away from the counter between the bed and the couch, right over me to turn off the phone alarm. The owner of the arm however didn’t speak, though my heart was already pounding.

Dear god what had I done? I don’t know this guy! What the hell did I do last night?! And Armin . . . I sunk deeper under the thick blanket, shivering. It was freezing. “How cold is it?” I muttered.

“18 Celsius,” came a smooth reply.

I forced myself not to start moving because my limbs desperately wanted to be doing something in this very awkward situation with a guy I had promised a “vacation” with, to do anything that might distract me in this very tense moment that wasn't tense. What the hell does "vacation" mean anyway?

Somewhere deep in the bowels of my mind, the dreams came back to me. I groaned just audibly. Was the soup dream a metaphor of this coming relationship with Levi? Because it felt like it. I was being used. He was going to make me love him—because I would do that, easily. Too easily, considering my past—and then I would never, ever see him again. Was it healthy to do something so fast? What was so special about me anyway for him to be with me? Nothing. Maybe that was the logic behind the relationship with me. God, how to feel like trash in two easy steps by Eren Jeager. You know, I'm actually going to write a book about that. It could go something like: 1\. Think carefully, long and hard about any and every decision you make 2\. Slap yourself because all of them were the wrong ones

I sat up and looked over at him. He was fully dressed and awake. Somehow his scuba stuff was already waiting at the door. He had stolen my marine book, and was reading something about swim bladders (which is a lot cooler than one would think).

“Jeez, when did you get up?” I asked.

“I’ve been up since three.”

Noticing my somewhat surprised look, he added, “Usually I sleep an hour less than that but I was tired from the traveling.”

“What time is it?” I muttered.

“6:45. At 7 there’s breakfast.”’

I slid out of bed, stiff against the cold and did the bathroom thing—already pulling on a pair of swim trunks I hadn’t worn yesterday and some shirt. He was waiting for me when I got out which surprised me a little bit. I cleared my throat.

“Uhm, Levi, I don’t understand what I like, agreed to last night, I uh, don’t know if . . .” I trailed off, figuring the rest was kind of implied. I had been staring directly at him, but now I turned my attention to the bed covering, picking at it for a loose thread.

“Eren,” he looked at me steadily. “You don’t even know me. Of course you don’t know if you want anything to do with me. It’s a choice.”

“O-okay,” I gasped. I had a hot flash, and my head felt much, much lighter. The room was tilting. The soothing depth of it causing me to practically swoon. I didn’t even know if I could trust him and he could still do this to me. Ridiculous.

He held the door into the hall briefly. “You could ask a question,” he went on. “If you want to know me better.”

“Okay,” I bit the inside of my lip. “Can um, can this be, you know. . .”

He didn’t seem to, and I didn’t seem to know (more like I chickened out) so I changed questions. I wracked my brain for one. “Um, what’s your favorite color?”

There was a pause. It was hot-humid so maybe that’s why I broke into a sweat, but it didn’t explain my racing heart.

“Teal.”

I couldn’t resist laughing. Dear God I’m a loser. “No.”

“Seriously.”

“You’re just flirting,” how did I say that. How. WHY. My comfort zone has been kicked and beaten and left to die on the street corner. Because the thing is, when I’m dealing with people that like me or I like them, I have a few strategies to let them know I like them.  
1\. Pretend they don’t exist

2\. Never look them in the eye

3\. Make freaky jokes about killing the girl in front of me

True story.

“Well then what’s your favorite color?”

I could actually tell him it was “red” and be honest. I mean, I was freaking out a little bit. But, I could trust Levi, right? It was all about trust. Maybe. AGH.

“Grey.”

He scoffed, “Who’s the one flirting now.”

“Seriously.”

“You lie.”

I was a little lost for words, considering how surprised I was that this hadn’t turned out horribly awkward, but somewhere other than my brain, I managed to form the phrase, “All liars go to hell, Levi! I wouldn’t lie!”

He looked up at me out of the corner of his eye. “They don’t in Mexico.”

We made it out of the resort and began rounding the pool to the little dining house, passing briefly through the shade of a palm tree.

“You know, I really don’t understand that. What’s up with the no rules in Mexico thing you have?”

“I learned it on the first trip from my roommate. His “No Rules” was more of a “Let’s prank everyone” kind of thing. We left a pile of coconuts outside everyone’s rooms and found a couple of the giant kind of cockroaches. We put those in the teachers’ rooms. We were in Honduras though so we also ended up filling one guy’s bed with hermit crabs and locking three in a bathroom by piling furniture outside of it. He got caught but no one ever guessed I was his accomplice.”

“Wow,” I was mildly impressed and freaked out. “You’re not going to do that… are you?”

“Nah. They’d figure out it was either Hanji or I—and my dive buddy can’t get in trouble.”

“How noble of you,” I muttered, though now I was more concerned with the new topic. Who was my dive buddy???

Levi seemed to have guessed what I was thinking. “I have a feeling Smith grouped you with Hanji and I,” he told me. “Either that or he put you with another new kid.”

“Ah,” I pulled on the door handle. It didn’t budge. Levi sighed, and brushed my hand away, his hand still impressively chilled. I would be lying if his touch didn’t take my breath away, but I kind of wish I could control myself better.

He pushed the door inward and it folded. Without waiting he made his way first into the room with me following behind.

It was dimly lit with ceiling fans slowly turning above our heads. The floors and tables and chairs were wooden, though the walling was majorly window or mirror. Most of the group, though not all of it, was getting food or eating.

“Eren!” Pixis jubilated, turning around in the food line to face me, completely ignoring Levi who was between us. “How was your first Mexican fiesta?”

“I think you mean siesta,” a tall, dark-skinned boy next to a red headed girl, called from a table.

“Oh right,” Pixis waved him off.

“Um,” all I could think about now was the texture of the cooked carrot on my feet. “Good?”

“Excellent! Over the years, all of Levi here’s roommates have had a fairly good time,” he leaned over and stage whispered, “Though I hear he’s a bit of a clean freak.”

“Oi,” Levi protested. Pixis laughed and ruffled his hair. It was not a significant event, to see someone get his hair ruffled, but I would never forget the look on Levi’s face as he stared forward. His eyes were huge with surprise. His breath intake had stopped entirely. His nostrils flared like that of a charging bull. His lip pressed into a thin line. And I could almost telepathically hear him shout, “YOU ASSh—.”

And then the line was moving forward, and I was fighting a very strong urge to double over laughing at the guy that was probably hoping to get lucky with me.

Levi didn’t seem to notice my suppressed happiness though, as he flicked his hair out of his eyes in an attempt to remain dignified, and got a meal only comprising of fruit (the choices being scrambled eggs with mexican salsa (cut up tomato, onion, pepper), baked beans, watermelon, mango slices, and orange juice) and waited patiently for me to choose what I wanted before escorting me to a table nearby where Hanji sat alone.

“Buddy!” she exclaimed.

“Please, I haven’t been harassed enough this morning,” Levi dropped his plate a seat away from her and touched the seat next to him on his left. I sat down next to him.

“Ooh, did Eren do something naughty?” Hanji looked like she was on the brink of discovering something revolutionary.

“Haah . . .” I felt like dying. Levi didn’t say anything and awkward settled over the valley, not that Hanji observed any of it. There were a few things I learned at that breakfast in the span of twenty minutes. Because it’s just funner this way, I’m not going to include context.

1\. Hanji started a petition to make “funner” into a real word about a month ago

2\. Just because it’s small enough to fit in your mouth doesn’t mean you should eat it

3\. Allergic reactions to mango goo (from the tree not the fruit) is fairly common

4\. Smith snores. Loudly.

5\. Two years ago a shark head butted itself into Hanji’s shoulder accidentally during a feeding frenzy

6\. Levi once caught a fish in his scuba mask

7\. When you wear the glasses of a nerd you get star trek herpes

 

Shadis announced we would have to leave in about a half hour for the boat, and told us to go get ready. On the way out, Mr. Smith gave us four bottles of water to keep in the room for hydration purposes.

We went back upstairs slowly I asked him about the shit jokes. Levi told me a story that went something like this:  
“The Shit jokes started around first grade. I saw a cow sit its ass down into its own shit. It was literally the most hilarious thing I’ve ever seen. Since then, I’ve been seeking the Senpai of Shit. Something more hilarious than a cow sitting in its own shit. I might actually laugh if I saw the Senpaishit.”

I laughed, because I had figured out a while back we’re all kind of on life quests, but a shit-mission was kind of over the top. I kind of had to like that about Levi—how he surrounded himself in ridiculous rules and ideas and people that deserved full faith in because without them, there wasn’t much to believe in in a world in dire need for comic relief from the tragic boringness of ordinary people and life.  
Levi took off his normal shirt and put on the swim shirt. I averted my eyes quickly as he turned to me.

“Do your back?” he offered gruffly.

“Yeah, thanks,” I sat down at the edge of the bed, and he behind me. I shivered slightly as his hands made contact with my back and rubbed in the cream. Unlike with any other stranger, he seemed to have no problem rubbing it in, which is better than with normal people who just kind of apply it badly because they’re afraid of hurting you. But Levi wasn’t scared of hurting me because he knew he wouldn’t.

He finished, and I pulled on the diving boots (which are really booties) and found my scuba mask buried in my crap along the right side of the wall.

“Hey Eren, I could use some help.” I bolted upright. Levi? Need help? With what?

Levi crossed the room to stand before me and took off the diving shirt he’d been planning to wear. Gorgeous skin that had been caged by the shirt seemed erotic to have hit free air, and stretched taut across the hills and valleys of his muscle, flaring a deep, lusting desire through my veins to run my lips over his sculpted stomach. 

I felt very disproportionate amounts of blood all over my body.

He handed me a bottle of sunblock. I moved shakily to do his back but he stopped me. “My back’s fine, it’s parts of my stomach that I can’t reach.”

I stared at him, not sure whether to crack up laughing or run screaming. Levi pushed me back slightly to slide between my leg and the bed, where he laid down, his feet touching the floor and his hands behind his head. “Do it,” and then he dropped his voice so instead this deep and gravelly voice said, “You want to.”

I do, I thought. No you don’t! We have to be down at the pool in twenty minutes! Shut up. Be reasonable! ARGH you’re killing me. Aw just do it. It won’t be long. What if it leads to . . . other things? Shut up you whiny fifteen year old virgin and feel up this guy.

That last voice seemed the most commanding, so I did as it said.

I started right in the middle of his chest from where I knelt on his left side, but Levi shifted and said, “It’s a choice to hold back.”

He was right.

I started low, because logically, if I worked the other way, not only would I be more likely to look at him and remember this was another human and not a fantasy, but also because then it wouldn’t be as likely I’d run into any bumps that had come up while I’d been making my way down.

There were these two indents in his skin, lines that went down to his crotch, likely, and went around either side of his belly button. I dabbed my right hand’s index finger in sunblock, and traced up the line on the right side of his body.

I looked up at him. “Is this okay?”

Levi had his eyes closed. “Yes.”

I did the left side, and looked up again, but Levi was still motionless, his eyes were still closed. I slowly made my way up his stomach, sticking firmly to just the valleys of his stomach.  
First I went up his right side. The first valley led to the lower ab muscles, so I went right across, and then down his left to make sure it’d been sun-blocked properly. I dabbed more sunblock onto my finger. The faintest movement went up Levi’s body. I looked to his face, to see if I had done something wrong, but once again, it was unreadable.

I retraced the left side, and then worked up the line his muscles made on his left side. At the curve at the top leading to his sternum. Next I worked up his right side, envisioning it to be a cake I was handfrosting (surely that’s a thing, right? Right!?) to keep my hand from trembling too much.

My eyes felt glazed over, and I kept blinking to get whatever was in them out. I had completed the distinct lines of his stomach, marveling at the lack of imperfection on them. I looked at his pecs, and wondered if I could, er, had to do that too.

“Go higher.”

“Err?!” I hated the raspy quality that had taken over my throat.

“Of course. I’m more likely to get sunburned on my upper body.”

“O-okay.”

Would I end up touching his nipples? Was that weird? That was kind of weird wasn’t it. I wasn’t going to touch them. Oh god, what if I accidentally brush them?! Would Levi be okay with that? What if they’re like women’s and sensitive? I mean, my mom had complained about tit soreness after breastfeeding me and Mikasa to her friends, and I don’t know this crap! Why am I even thinking of this, omg Eren just don’t touch! He's a dude girl rules don't apply to him!

I went up on his sternum, all of my fingertips covered in the white stuff. I rubbed more lotion between my palms and then did his lower and upper shoulders, both my hands on either side of him so I was leaning over the smaller framed person below me. It clicked that, I had been kind of mistrusting of Levi, and I still was, because I didn’t know if I would be in control of what happened. And even now I was terrified but a welling fire of confidence had built up inside me as well.

Levi had his eyes open, staring up at me but the expression in his face had changed. Not significantly, but he looked softer, a little less shut up in his shell.

I could kiss him. I could kiss him right now, and he couldn’t stop me. Maybe. His scent was so over powering, like a tsunami. He was a force of nature, dear God.

A phone slid up from under Levi’s head as he thumbed it out from behind his neck. He clicked the time. 7:54 am. No time, basically, for my angst.

 

“Should I?” I whispered, wishing I could cough out the raspiness of my voice but not willing to break the moment.

“It’s a choice,” Levi murmured back, his own voice thick like it was suffering from a hundred days of parchedness in the desert.

I released him and sat on the bed, already feeling the edge of dismay. “I can’t.” Immediately any happy feeling going on within me shut down. The clashing down, tearing of walls in my head. I had disappointed him, surely, and he wouldn’t want anything to do with me again.

Levi sat up next to me. “Let’s go down.” I was relieved he didn’t question me, or reject me for my rejection of him. Because god, this was crazy, but it was kind of like I realized right then that, I wouldn’t gain anything about his person from kissing him. It was too easy. And once I had, it would be hard to take it back. And it would’ve been too easy. I didn’t have to fan after him for months, or stay up late nights talking with a friend about my tragic love case, or daydream about him all through my studies and sports. He just came to me and gave himself. And it was ridiculously easy now. Yeah, I thought, feeling slightly better. It’s the chase, I’m missing the chase, and I can’t be with someone that thinks I can’t give one. 

Surprisingly, we weren’t the last ones downstairs. Four other pairs of people had yet to show, but it seemed the people on the boat needed another fifteen minutes anyway to set up, so it wasn’t a big deal. Shadis looked pretty uptight, pacing nervously in his flip-flops and Hawaiian shirt, but Mr. Smith and Pixis both looked pretty chill, if only traceably annoyed.

“Sorry we’re late!” Historia squeaked as she and Ymir appeared from the darkened foyer leading into the hotel.

“There was a cockroach,” Ymir cackled. She held up a little glass jar where a magnified cockroach stormed around.

“COOL,” one of Hanji’s friends shouted.

Another one excitedly spilled, “If you cut off its head it can live up to nine days afterwards!”

“I’ll get tweezers!”

“Levi do you have any disposable gloves?!”

“We’re not butchering an animal!” Squealed some girl with her black hair done in loose pigtails.

Smith glanced over, and casually but firmly said, “Ymir, let it go.”

I swore I heard someone begin to sing Let It Go, the cockroach version, and Ymir begrudgingly released the cockroach.

About then everyone had appeared simultaneously all equally apologetic, so we headed down to the docks.

We stopped below a coconut tree (wow how smart) and Smith began organizing people into groups.

“Six groups,” Smith told us. “Pixis, Shadis, and I will lead three of them. The other three will be headed by Levi and Hanji, Ymir and Christa, and Franz.” 

Hanji cheered, jumping into the air. “We’re buddies!” Levi didn’t say anything, nor did he look at me. I felt as though I knew he was a little disappointed.

Ymir was staring in awe at Smith. “You, trust me, with leading people?” she thrust her finger at me. “Can he be in our group? Please?”

“Eren’s in Levi’s team,” Pixis clapped a hand down on my shoulder. “Marco!” 

“Polo!” some guy yelled back.

“Get over here!”

Some freckled guy made his way over. I felt Levi’s eyes on me but I didn’t meet his gaze this time, my cheeks so flushed I felt they were disintegrate from heat in the beating sun.

“We’re putting you with Eren,” Pixis said, clapping his other hand down on Marco’s shoulder. “Show him our ways, okay?”

“Yes sir,” Marco smiled at me. He looked nice, not handsome, but kind of cute, with dark eyes and hair. “Hi, I’m Marco.”

“Eren,” I shook his hand.

“By the way, don’t ever make Marco Polo jokes around me,” he was still smiling. “Not only will I kill you in your sleep, I’ll stuff your body with methylamine and cart you down to the Stop Marco Jokes Coorporation, or as I like to say, MJC.”

I was confused because he’d just made one. “Um . . . okay . . .”

“Oi, Eren,” Levi called. Hanji had already shot ahead towards the boat, yelling something in Spanish at the boatsmen. “Let’s go.”

There were about five Mexican men scrambling about the boat setting up BCDs and tanks. They were fast, going from tank to tank quickly. It was a long boat that accommodated everyone easily, with a roof over our heads to protect from sun.

Hanji told us to get with the right sized jacket so we did, all four of us had size S BCDs (Small is average size it seems in scuba terms) and they began passing out weight belts, asking us what our weights were.

The boat started shortly after that.

“I bet I’ll see a shark first,” Hanji boasted.

“How much do you bet?” Levi looked curious.

Hanji thought. “The oonio cat.”

He raised an eyebrow at her, me glancing madly between both of them. “Really?”

“Yes.”

“You’re on,” he held out his hand.

“I think this is the first time you’ve ever let me touch your hand,” and Hanji shook on it. 

“Onion cat?” I looked for answers at Levi. Hanji was the one to reply.

“No! Silly Eren. Oonio cat.”

Before I could ask what an onion had to do with a cat, the boat stopped and Levi muttered, “Suit up,” and sat down in front of his tank.

I scrambled to do the same, lifting my weight belt off the ground and hurriedly trying to shove it around my waist.

Levi sighed, watching me. “Give it to me.” He was getting out of his tank, which he had effortlessly slipped on. His flippers were already on his feet.

“O-okay,” I gasped, not sure how he could possibly help me when the slightest misstep would send him crashing to the ground with his awkward duck feet.

He backed me up so I was standing on his flippers, his breath on my back as he slid the weight belt, which was kind of heavy considering it was just a piece of rope with basically two four pound rocks on it, and slipped it effortlessly around me, though there was no way he could have known how to tie it when he could barely see around me. Somehow he did it, and he tightened it until the strap rubbed uncomfortably against my goosebumped skin. All the while, him so close I could imagine him pressing his chest, abs, groin, to my back… shut up thoughts before something unsightly happens.

Hanji was smiling, looking at us knowledgeably. “I’m not wearing my glasses but a blind man could see what’s going on.”

I swallowed, as Levi coolly replied, “He’ll get it next dive.” I recalled we did two dives in the morning and one dive in the afternoon, my heart racing in my chest.

Sitting back down between Hanji and Marco, my head swimming even though we hadn’t even hit the water yet, I thought back to Armin. Honestly, I hadn’t stopped thinking back to Armin except for when Levi made me stop. Once, I had him over with a frenemy, Jean. They stayed over that night.

We sat around a fire in the back of my house. It was cool, like a perfect late spring night, and Armin and I were doing this ridiculous thing we’d just figured out. You see, if you press your back against someone else’s, and then move, it not only feels really weird, but also kind of good. Plus, since we were trying at the same time to sit out of the fire’s smoke, there wasn’t much room, so we ended up forced back to back, the slightest wrong movement sending us sliding. Not that either of us minded. I had never felt closer to Armin, nor as turned on. God, I loved him. So we were doing that, occasionally saying, “hey!” or “Omg I’m going to fall into the stream.” because the fire pit was built on this precarious spot by the forest that dropped down to the brook that runs alongside my house.

“Okay, Eren,” Jean said, smiling. “Who have you had a crush on?”

I was really truthful that night. Something about the happiness in the air didn’t make me feel like hiding.

“Um, I’ve had a ton, but the big ones were Annie in second grade because she gave me a bloody nose,” both Armin and Jean laughed. “And then a couple in Germany you guys don’t know. And so like, five girls, and two guys.”

Jean perked up. “Ooh, you like boys? Who?”

Does he think it’s the two of them? Cause it’s not Jean. He just wishes it was. I shook my head. “I don’t really want to say.” I mean, one of them has his back pressed up against me, moving his shoulder blades, spine, and muscles on an erotic dance all over my back that I didn’t want to stop because I loved him. He would get scared.

“I just want to know a secret,” Jean said, looking off to the side, sighing pitifully.

“He doesn’t want to say,” Armin defended me. My heart lifted slightly. “Don’t make him.”

He knows. Does he? Omg I think he does.

In a couple minutes, Armin stopped pressing his back to mine, stopped holding me from slipping over the edge. Maybe he had felt me shaking with excitement and anxiety, and he couldn’t face that.

“Boy,” a squat, shorter than Levi Mexican guy in a wetsuit, fully loaded, stood with his face in mine. “Boy get moving! Go! Go!” We were first group? I didn’t know that!

I got up, stumbling backward slightly under the weight of the tank. The divemaster grabbed the back of my tank, it helped I was hunched over so he could, and dragged me over to the back of the boat, where Levi and the rest were already bobbing about like apples. He let go of me, and repeated the instructions from the day before that I had heard from Smith. “Look straight ahead at the cruise ship (yes, there was a disney cruise ship about eight hundred feet from us), one hand on your regulator and one on your weight belt and take a big step.”

I did, and cold water hit me, washing away perspiration that had been accumulating on me in the humidity and heat of the Caribbean sun. My mask instantly fogged over.

“Dive! Dive!” cried the divemaster, who had just hit the water himself.

Crap, I thought. I should’ve used de-fog in the boat.

Everyone deflated their BCDs, sinking under the surface slowly. I raised the deflating thing above my head and did the same, locating my dive buddy as I submerged my head.

I let my mask fill with water, pressed on it with three fingers even as I continued to let air out of my BCD, and blew air out my nose. The mask clearly, and I blinked back the sting of salt on my eyes. I could see the bottom stretching out below me as I made my way dow—OW. Holy motherfucking shit bitch holy WHY DOES IT HURT. I shot up instantly, my ears throbbing like they each had their own hearts.

I held on them, wincing, whimpering out of my regulator. Marco was looking up at me, everyone was, they were all staring up at me as I bobbed so close to the surface, my ears trying to kill me.

There was the sound of metal hitting metal down below, and I looked up. The dive master was pinching his nose, blow air out. I had no fucking clue what he was doing. He asked if I was okay, pressing his pointer finger to his thumb and holding up the three fingers.

I shook my head and pointed at my ears.

This repeated two more times.

God, Armin, Love, Break-ups, my motherfracking EARS. God hates me. God hates my very boring existence.

Levi and Hanji exchanged a look, and Levi puffed a little air into his BCD. He floated up to me, and looked at me, his grey eyes calm and all-knowing. I looked at him, hoping for an explanation through my self-loathing and pity. Something about him, his own special something, raised my hopes that I’d be okay right now. He pinched his nose and blew bubbles out the top. I let go of my right ear, and did the same. There was a popping sound, and the pressure released some. I relaxed slightly, only to instantly pull up again as I sunk because the pressure came back. Levi repeated the nose squeeze, and so I did. Slowly, painfully, we made our way down to the bottom, him some in front of me, as though, despite helping me, he wanted to go. I wanted to cry out a little bit, because I hated being this helpless problem, so, even though my head throbbed, I let go of my ears, my eyes swimming with painful tears, and did the okay sign at the divemaster. He nodded once and took the lead, swimming off. My spotlight turned off, and I sighed in relief. I filled my mask again to wipe off the tears, and muscled through the pain, hating the dive, hating the stupid trip more than anything. I just wanted to go home. Marco appeared next to me, and smiled, though he had the regulator in his mouth. I sighed, thankful he was there and enjoying this because I kind of really hated it, and turned slightly on my side. All the pressure, well, except for the smallest amount, vanished instantly from my left ear. Surprised, I did the same on my right, and though it didn’t vanish like on the left, it lessened considerably. I blew bubbles out my nose again, and again, until finally, it popped. Then I finally looked around. It was an entire different world with similar features. The sky was blue liquid and microscopic organisms. The earth was now white instead of brown, and easy to crumble, as my knees hit the ground and I grabbed some in my hands. The foliage was no longer bushes and shrubs, but small, low-lying builds of coral. And the life was so much better. Fish were everywhere, not ashamed or afraid that top predators loomed over them. I smirked a little at a parrotfish as long as my forearm as it passed by, thankful it was there. It took a shit. The funny thing about parrotfish is that they eat corals, cleaning up dead ones so new corals could grow, and then they poop out finely ground sand that then appears on beaches and sea floors pretty much everywhere they are. I sniggered a little, and, feeling someone’s eyes on me, looked up. Levi had turned to watch me, and pointed at the parrotfish, as if asking me if that was what I was amused about.

I nodded vigorously. I was so glad he cared about me after all the trouble I caused him, though I didn’t know why he didn’t give up on me.

He took out his regulator, and mouthed, “Stoplight Parrotfish” and then, turning away, swished off after Hanji, who was flat on the ground gazing under a rock structure.

Under that rock structure was a lobster, which Hanji got highfived for seeing from the divemaster. Levi sort of changed underwater, as did Hanji. They became in sync. If Levi spotted a fish that they hadn’t seen so far, and Hanji would just sense he had, and would take a strong kick to get next to him, and then they would both pop out their regulators and simultaneously mouth the name of the fish. Then Hanji would notice a Christmas tree worm, and they would both take the liberty of poking them down into their shoots, or if Levi saw a sea cucumber, he would pick it up and hand it to him. At one point, Hanji put a hand on Levi’s shoulder and transferred a shrimp with long spindly legs onto his shoulder. And I thought there was a no touching the wildlife rule. I thought it was really cool to watch them, because it wasn’t often you saw two people that could work so well as a team.

About fifty minutes into the dive, the dive master stopped, as did we then, and he inflated a tube advertising our location for our boat to come save us. In a few minutes, we began surfacing.

Hanji ripped off her mask, laughing wildly, and blurted, “Holy crap that was adorable.”

“What?” Only the three of us, her, Levi, and I, had surfaced so far.

“I gave up caring about being embarrassed a while ago, so I’ll tell you. You two. Levi, this short, kind of quietly aggressive, scary guy, donating time on one of the few things he loves, helping out an awkward, cute boy who obviously has no idea what he’s doing.”

Neither of us said anything, so she huffed and said, “Okay, maybe you don’t see it like I do, but I’m impressed.”

I glanced at Levi, suddenly just confident enough. “Levi, why in the world does she think I’m awkward?” my voice was high, whiny, like a little kid’s.

Levi glanced at me, his mouth just slightly open because he still wore his dive mask. “Puberty makes the best of us weak.”

Hanji chuckled, but the two of us turned away coolly, though I felt like I had to swim across the Atlantic if I wanted to feel normal again. Levi glanced at me, and his lip twitched just slightly upward. I felt his delicate fingers, trailing down the back of my hand, asking for permission.

Behind us, the others were surfacing, already talking about everything we’d seen loudly over the sound of the boat pulling up in front of our group.

I closed my eyes a moment, and his fingers stopped. I thought about Armin for a moment again. I didn’t have to hold out for him any longer. I didn’t have to hide myself for him any longer. Levi proved that. Levi gave me the choice to let him go.

I laced my fingers into his, and squeezed lightly, our secret share of mixed, individual feelings, just ours, content, because in this clock-controlled paradigm, Levi and I were unbound in Mexico.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed!  
> The ear problem Eren has is common for divers on their first trip, and comes from going up and down fast or ascending too quickly. I had the same issue on my first dive and I literally hated the first two days of the trip because it was such a hell getting down there, though of course I could've just gone back to the boat at any time. But it got easier over time so yay.
> 
> Also as a correction, I mixed up the words "terminal" and "gate" XD. Well that shows up my intelligence.

**Author's Note:**

> Some clarifications:  
> It is unknown to me whether a porcupine fish could kill someone in the water. However, it or its relative the puffer fish is a delicacy in Japan that annually kills about 100 people because of the extremely precise way it must be cut to not be lethal to humans. 
> 
> Reference to Doritos. Junkfood but tastes great. Makes you thirsty but that's why they invented mountain dew. You can buy them in pretty much any large, American grocery store.
> 
> Reference to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl which is a funny, easy read filled with eccentric characters, that I recommend reading leisurely.


End file.
